Voltage control of skyrmions: Creation, annihilation, and zero-magnetic field stabilization
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A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
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Date
2021-04-26
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en
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5
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Applied Physics Letters, Volume 118, issue 17
Abstract
Voltage manipulation of skyrmions is a promising path toward low-energy spintronic devices. Here, voltage effects on skyrmions in a GdOx/Gd/Co/Pt heterostructure are observed experimentally. The results show that the skyrmion density can be both enhanced and depleted by the application of an electric field, along with the ability, at certain magnetic fields to completely switch the skyrmion state on and off. Further, a zero magnetic field skyrmion state can be stabilized at a negative bias voltage using a defined voltage and magnetic field sequence. The voltage effects measured here occur on a few-second timescale, suggesting an origin in voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy rather than ionic effects. By investigating the skyrmion nucleation rate as a function of temperature, we extract the energy barrier to skyrmion nucleation in our sample. Further, micromagnetic simulations are used to explore the effect of changing the anisotropy and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction on skyrmion density. Our work demonstrates the control of skyrmions by voltages, showing functionalities desirable for commercial devices.Description
Funding Information: This work was supported by the Academy of Finland (Grant Nos. 295269, 306978, and 327804). We acknowledge the provision of facilities by Aalto University at OtaNano, the Micronova Nanofabrication Center and the Nanomicroscopy Center, as well as computational resources provided by the Aalto Science-IT project. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Author(s). Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
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Zhou, Y, Mansell, R & van Dijken, S 2021, ' Voltage control of skyrmions : Creation, annihilation, and zero-magnetic field stabilization ', Applied Physics Letters, vol. 118, no. 17, 172409 . https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0047892